Yesterday I had a disturbing and surreal conversation with a very dear but very right wing friend. I need help with some facts (I don't know all the answers) and if there's anyplace I can get accurate facts, it's dKos. The weird claims that need rebuttal are in blockquote to make them stand out.
First, she started with talking about her son who is an officer in the USMC; support services on his base are pretty much nonexistent because so many base personnel are civilians and are furloughed due to the government shutdown, and the base is pretty much non-functional. He had asked her something like "Mom, is this really worth it? (and he's as rightwing as she is).
She explained to me that she told him that it was worth it, because
every country in the world where health care was socialized had been an abject failure, and that we couldn't let Obama destroy our fine health care system no matter what.
Thus began an increasingly bizarre interpretation of the Affordable Care Act and of the idiotic behavior of the Republicans in Congress...
I pointed out to her that 1) maybe I'm selfish, but that I personally will benefit from the ACA because I will be getting better coverage for a far lower cost and my current BC/BS premiums for a bad policy are killing me, and that 2) what the House is doing is highly unethical. She warned me that
don't be so sure you'll be getting a better price because you won't, they're not telling you the truth.
Then, she pointed out that she gets her information from
doctors (she sees a lot of them because she has some chronic medical conditions that she is treating at a clinic that focuses on nutrition, vitamins, and alternative therapies) and they must be right! She told me that
as of October 1, Dr. Xxxxx (her alternative doctor; he is an MD) cannot practice or even set foot in any of our area hospitals.
I didn't question that claim, but I do know that most of his procedures, being "alternative" and/or "experimental", are not covered by health insurance
anyway and are probably
already not permitted in hospitals.
She then described a friend of hers who is in her 90s with congestive heart failure and a pacemaker; the elderly patient needs a new pacemaker and
Medicare won't allow her to get her much-needed pacemaker because of Obamacare and because she's too old to bother with.
She went on to tell me that her own primary care doctor told her that
if any doctor dared to replace her friend's pacemaker on a cash basis he would lose his license and possibly be prosecuted.
Back to the government shutdown...I told her that, while I understood people's dissatisfaction and suspicion about the ACA, my biggest complaint with what the Republicans were doing is that they are
violating proper procedure and shirking their duties as legislators. Let them follow the proper procedure, I said. Let them attain a Senate majority in 2014 and the presidency in 2016, I said; then they can repeal Obamacare if it means so much to them. But what they are doing right now is unethical and immoral and an embarrassment to boot. On the contrary, she said...
the men who did the same thing 240 years ago were called traitors but we now see them as heroes and patriots; what these congressmen are doing is no less important than the American Revolution.
I COULD. NOT. BELIEVE. that she just compared the idiotic antics of the Republican House to the American Revolution! I tried to point out that 240 years ago we were a colony and our forefathers rebelled against an outside colonial power; the Republicans in congress are doing no such thing, they are quite literally attempting a coup of
their own government, are causing severe hardship to millions of people who are either out of work or who are suffering with lack of services, and are close to being traitors. She started with some argument starting with
well in the civil war...
and I really had to tune out for a minute and change the subject.
As I reiterated that Republicans should win a few elections and "repeal Obamacare" legally and legitimately, she told me that "she had heard" that
some parts of Obamacare cannot be repealed
and that, anyway,
the destruction of our healthcare system goes all the way back to the Clinton administration
(she didn't explain what was "destroyed" back then and how it relates to "Obamacare") and that
the Bush administration let the destruction continue.
She also did not explain how a law "cannot be repealed"; if they can "repeal" it to end the government shutdown today, why
can't they repeal it in a few years? I didn't ask.
I was tempted to ask her why the problem was specifically "Obamacare" because, obviously, it was Clinton and Bush's fault, but I sensed another journey through the looking glass if I went there.
Help! How does one address such a series of outlandish claims?